At Odds
On Affirmative
Action

Should Colleges Consider
Race as a Factor in Admissions?
Two Experts Debate the Issue.

Do you think colleges and universities should consider an applicant's race when deciding whether to accept their application? Currently, some schools do. But it's an issue that has bedeviled U.S. courts for decades.

Now the Supreme Court has agreed to weigh in, reviewing two cases that challenge law-school and undergraduate admissions policies at the University of Michigan. The cases were filed by unsuccessful white applicants who say they were better qualified than blacks and Hispanics who were admitted.

Intensifying the controversy, the Bush administration has urged the high court to strike down the Michigan admissions policies, arguing in a brief filed with the court that such policies unfairly discriminate against white students. The court is expected to issue a ruling by the end of June.

The Michigan cases are important because the Supreme Court hasn't made a significant ruling on affirmative action in college admissions since 1978. (Affirmative action is the practice of improving employment or educational opportunities for members of minority groups and for women.) The high court that year issued the Bakke opinion, which outlawed racial quotas but left room to use race as one of many factors in admissions decisions. The case involved a white man, Allan Bakke, who was rejected for admission to a California medical school while minorities with lower test scores got in through a special program. The court ruled 5-4 that racial preferences could be used as part of admissions decisions to achieve diversity at public schools. Numerous challenges followed, however, and appeals courts have been divided in ruling on them.

In this debate, Linda Chavez, president of the Center for Equal Opportunity, a nonprofit research organization in Washington, D.C., argues that it is wrong to consider an applicant's race as a factor in college admissions. Ms. Chavez was President Bush's choice to become secretary of labor in January 2001, but she withdrew her nomination.

Taking the other side, arguing that America's colleges and universities can't afford to be neutral about race, is Charlotte Johnson, assistant dean of the University of Michigan Law School. Ms. Johnson is a graduate of the law school and a former partner in the Detroit law firm of Garan Lucow Miller, where she was the first African-American woman partner.

Each writer was given an equal opportunity to present her position and respond to the other's arguments.